Dodgers president of baseball operations says it’s not the best team that wins the World Series, it’s the hottest team. His task is to figure out how to be the hottest team.
The Dodgers lost to the Padres in the NLDS, even though Los Angeles was 22 games better than San Diego over the 162-game regular season. The team that played better in the NLDS definitely won the series, but can you really say the better team won?
If you ask Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, he’d likely say no. At his press conference on Tuesday, he was asked if he would construct a team differently for the postseason than for the long regular season and if there’s a way to bridge the gap between the two.
“I guess a different way to answer that, if you’re asking me if I think the best team wins the World Series every year, I would say no.
“I think the hottest team wins the World Series every year, so it’s how to put us in the best position going into October to be the hottest team. In 2017, we went through that cold streak, we got hot and we rolled through the playoffs until the World Series.
“Each year has its own different narrative to it. I don’t believe that the best team wins the World Series every year.”
Friedman went on to acknowledge that the Padres were hotter than the Dodgers in the NLDS, adding:
“You can look at it after a series and say, ‘Oh, this team played better,’ and that’s true. [The Padres] played better than we did, that’s not in dispute. But how much of it is things you can foresee in advance, as opposed to after the fact? I think that’s a really important distinction. …
“What can we do to hopefully put ourselves in position to play in October next year, and then, once we’re able to accomplish that, how do we put ourselves in the best position to be the hottest team during that stretch? I don’t know the answer to that, but we’ll definitely spend time trying to figure it out.”
The MLB postseason isn’t designed to identify the best team. It’s designed to crown a champion at the end of a tournament. If there is a formula to figure out how to be that hottest team, Friedman & Co. seem more likely than anyone to find it. The scary part is, there might not be a formula.
